<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>a holy thing (to love what death has touched) by heartofwinterfell</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26998483">a holy thing (to love what death has touched)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartofwinterfell/pseuds/heartofwinterfell'>heartofwinterfell</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>soulmate, dry your eyes [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Julie and The Phantoms (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, hey alexa play sleeping with ghosts by placebo</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-07 00:22:09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,052</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26998483</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartofwinterfell/pseuds/heartofwinterfell</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Julie Molina's words have been gray since the day she was born. She still never expected her soulmate to be a ghost.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Julie Molina/Luke Patterson</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>soulmate, dry your eyes [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1991287</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>47</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>778</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>a holy thing (to love what death has touched)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I've never written a soulmates au before, but there is a first time for everything! Like getting obsessed with a Netflix children's television show.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Julie Molina never minded messy things.</p><p>She was a color outside the lines girl, a doodle on the soles of her shoes girl, a write song lyrics in teal crayon on the back of the restaurant menu girl. Messy people left their smudgy fingerprints on every part of the world they touched. That’s what her mom said. And people with messy hearts loved loudly and often. Her mother used to say that, too.</p><p>She left her room on the messy side because if it was too clean and orderly, it all started looking like a hospital and Julie hated hospitals, always had and always would.</p><p>The doctors at the hospital all had messy handwriting. The one kind of mess Julie hated was of the handwriting variety and it was all her soulmate’s fault.</p><p>Their first words were chicken scratch on the inside of Julie’s wrist, written in permanent gray ink.</p><p>
  <em>we’re all a little crazy.</em>
</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Three days after, when there were still hundreds of withering dahlias in their living room and piles of uneaten casseroles in the fridge, Julie noticed.</p><p>Her dad’s words had gone gray.</p><p>“But -” Julie saw a video reel of all the times her mother smoothed over the place on his collarbone where her first words lay. In black ink. “I thought -”</p><p>Her dad collapsed on the couch, his entire body deflating. He looked like a teddy bear with too much of its stuffing torn out. “Your mother and I - we were planning on sitting down, all of us together, and talking about it. There was just never -”</p><p>Time.</p><p>The Molina family, gifted by fate a broken clock. Julie had thought that to herself before, written it into a song she stuffed at the very bottom of her dream box, but never had it been so true. The words on her wrist felt cold.</p><p>“But no one has ever said this to me.” Julie’d remember. Every book, every movie, every song told her that no one on earth ever forgets. </p><p>Her dad looked at her with sadness in his eyes that seemed to fill the whole room with salt water. Julie couldn’t breath. “They were - your words - they’ve always been gray. Since the day you were born.”</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>
  <em>recent searches</em>
</p><p>Can you be soulmates with someone you’ll never meet?</p><p>Can people be born with dead soulmates?</p><p>People born with gray words</p><p>Gray words</p><p>Ghosts</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>There were support groups for people with gray words.</p><p>Her tia had slipped a flier for a group in their neighborhood amongst her dad’s paperwork. Julie wondered if he would go. Then she wondered if she should go, too.</p><p>The online support forums were a thornier place.</p><p>She found one dedicated to people with proclaimed supernatural soulmates. A few posters were convinced, based on placement of their words, that their soulmate was destined to be a vampire. Some others, with no words or a peculiar birthmark, believed a full moon would reveal their mate. One woman claimed her words went gray when she was six, but while using a Ouija board with her friends, the board spelled out her words. It was her soulmate, she said, communicating with her from the other side.</p><p>Only one post referred to gray words since birth. The account was eerily similar to her own, if she ever took to writing out her life story. This person thought the shade of a person’s words differed up until their mother died and their father’s words turned. It was only the inexplicable mention of a Hollywood Ghost Club, a place the internet said did not exist, that baffled Julie.</p><p>When Julie went searching again for that post, less than a week later, it was gone. Scrubbed from existence. She felt, once again, alone in the universe.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>“There’s never not an explanation,” Flynn said just as the bell rang. It sounded shrill, like audio feedback. Her dad once told her the feedback is caused by a looped signal, sound travelling in a continuous circle. Julie felt trapped in a looped signal of her own nowadays. She went to school, she went home, she thought about her mother, she thought about her soulmate. Life looped. She didn’t play music. </p><p>“We’re going to work this out, I promise. And in the meantime…” Flynn pulled off three of her chunky bracelets - one in teal, one in aquamarine, and one the color of a blushing dahlia - and slipped them on Julie’s wrist, obscuring her words. “Yeah, we’re all a little crazy, but I don’t always need the reminder, thank you very much, Mr. Future Julie Molina.”</p><p>Julie rolled an aquamarine bead between her fingers as Mrs. Harrison called the class to attention and wondered if Flynn was right. Soulmate science went back hundreds - no, thousands - of years. There couldn’t be an anomaly that the science hadn’t already unpacked or debunked decades ago.</p><p>What if it was an explanation that Julie didn’t want to hear? She had spent years growing used to hearing not this time. Not much else we can do. Time to say goodbye.</p><p>“Julie?”</p><p>Mrs. Harrison was looking at her, expectantly. She had been given a grace period, time not to worry about preparing new pieces. The period had expired, but Julie had no new music.</p><p>“Is it - is it okay if I take another day?”</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>She took a year.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>And so it figured, on the day the well of her school’s good will finally ran dry, on the day it seemed music had given up on her once and for all, she met her soulmate. Because Julia Molina attracted messy things.</p><p>The cross felt heavy in her hands, like a pound of stone, as she brandished it at her mom’s piano. The air felt heavy too, the way it would if a pack of people were in the studio, not merely her and her cross.</p><p>“I know I saw something. I’m not crazy.”</p><p>A strong wind hit her back at the same time she heard -</p><p>
  <em>“We’re all a little crazy.”</em>
</p><p>She screamed. That sound did not end up being Luke’s words.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>She was not avoiding being alone with Luke. That would be childish and Julie Molina was not a child. She was just a girl with a ghost for a soulmate.</p><p>At first, she had no idea if he knew. Did ghosts have words? Did the words change after they died? What if he had met his soulmate when he was alive and was uninterested in being assigned a new one thanks to this cosmic blip? As Julie had found over the course of a year, her internet search results yielded no helpful answers.</p><p>Then she’d catch him looking at her, in a way that made her feel the whole world was cracking open. Julie Molina, a girl not so alone in the universe after all. Dare she even believe that. She wrote it on a scrap of paper with a golden tipped pen and put it in her dream box anyway.</p><p>That very same night - within the span of an hour - she ran into Luke in the kitchen. Messy things.</p><p>It wasn’t as scary as she thought it’d be, though her heart pounded like a bass drum and her hands felt sweaty and unsteady around a butter knife.</p><p>Only after they had sung together, snatches of an old song made new again, and he gave her a smile made of sunshine, did Julie really know. She looked at the handwriting on the paper, chicken scratch with letters too bunched together, and her words no longer felt cold.</p><p>As if reading her mind, he said, “So, should we talk about the other thing?”</p><p>The inside of Julie’s wrist burned as if he had touched her words himself. She thought of how she walked through him moments ago and how it felt like walking through snow. Swallowing, Julie cradled his song, like a real beating heart, in both hands and took a step back. “I think I need a little more time. To get used to all this.”</p><p>Julie didn’t see Luke nod, but she felt it, his own silent step back. He surprised her though, when she had turned to go and thought he had gone, by saying -</p><p>“Well, lucky for us, I might have all the time in the world.”</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>“See? I told you there had to be an explanation,” Flynn said once they retreated into Julie’s bedroom after the ghostly revelations. She was taking it all in remarkable strides. The words on Julie’s wrist buzzed. Someone in the living world knowing made it seem more real and not some dream Julie was always on the brink of waking up from.</p><p>“So you don’t think it’s weird?”</p><p>“Oh no, it’s definitely weird, but the cool, mysterious, dramatic love story kind of real.” Flynn shot up from her lounging position, an idea hitting her like lightning. “Your life is totally going to end up being a movie one day. Who do you they’ll get to play me?”</p><p>Julie laughed while trying not to ruminate too much on the idea her life would one day be the stuff of romantic fantasy. That meant the story had some kind of end. There’d be a climactic kiss, if she were to get a happy ending.</p><p>Or.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>
  <em>recent searches</em>
</p><p>Can ghosts come back from the dead?</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>It was near impossible to forget the boys were ghosts, but sometimes easy to forget she had Luke’s words on her wrist. That sounded terrible in her head, but it was only because she never felt the weight of some terrifying destiny when she was with Luke.</p><p>He made life happier. The world seemed to fill with brighter colors when he smiled at her on stage. When they wrote together, it was like they became of one mind and everything she had ever felt - all the loneliness, all the hopelessness, all the fear - he put into words. Some days, she had trouble discerning where Julie Molina ended and Luke Patterson began. That’d be a scary thought, if Luke didn’t make it all seem simple.</p><p>He was her friend. Her friend who she dreamed of dancing with in her most vivid daydreams. Her friend who had her words along his arm. Her friend who was dead.</p><p>She’d forget for a little while and then she’d watch the pen Luke was holding slip out of his fingers and fall through his foot onto the floor. The words on her wrist seemed to shudder.</p><p>She’d forget for a little while and then Nick would look at her in class, because he had lost his soulmate at a crushingly young age and thought they were kindred spirits of gray words. The words on her wrist sighed.</p><p>It was a looped signal.</p><p>She’d forget for a little while and then Reggie, while fiddling with his bass, began to tell her of their new friend who happened to be Alex’s long lost soulmate.</p><p>“And it totally explains now why Alex’s words were always gray as a kid!”</p><p>Julie’s fingers, running over her piano keys, hit a dissonant chord. “Sorry, did you just say Alex’s words were…”</p><p>Reggie nodded emphatically. “Gray, yeah. We didn’t talk about it much because his parents were super weird about it. It all makes total sense now though, doesn’t it?”</p><p>“His soulmate - Willie - he’s another ghost?”</p><p>“Yup!” Reggie popped the ‘p’ and grinned. “Pretty perfect, huh?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Julie whispered, an ugly feeling bubbling up inside her chest. “Perfect.”</p><p>Long after rehearsal, the feeling still sat heavy on her heart, like a plant she knew better than to feed. She’d have to do what she often did when her feelings felt too big for her body to handle. On a piece of notebook paper meant for some English essay, Julie poured her envy into a song. It hurt. Her fingers cramped around her pen and her eyes stung with unshed tears as she went to bury the song in her dream box.</p><p>That was when an old scrap of paper caught her eye.</p><p>
  <em>Julie Molina, a girl not so alone in the universe.</em>
</p><p>Written in gold-tipped pen. Only now, there were black, chicken scratched additions.</p><p>
  <em><strong>Luke Patterson &amp;</strong> Julie Molina, <strong>a boy and</strong> a girl not so alone in the universe.</em>
</p><p>“Boundaries,” Julie whispered to herself. Her tears were no longer unshed and they were not angry.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>“Hey dad?”</p><p>The sun had seemed to come up earlier that morning, as if time itself had sped up. The Orpheum approached. Her dad made banana chocolate chip pancakes, her favorite, but they tasted a little too sweet. On her wrist, her words sang.</p><p>“When you met mom, were you scared?”</p><p>Her dad hummed and it sounded like the opening bar of a wistful sonata. “You know, I thought I would be. I thought it’d be scary to meet the person you’re going to spend the rest of your life with because life is a long time. But then I met your mom and everything was simple and it got me thinking that fate knows what it’s doing.”</p><p>Julie swallowed. Her whole world smelled of bananas and slightly burnt chocolate and her mother’s perfume that still hung in the rafters. “Were you scared when you lost her?”</p><p>Her dad’s hand was warm when it covered hers, warm like a hand-knitted quilt or a well-worn flannel. “Sad, yes. Hurting, yes. But scared? No, not scared.”</p><p>“Because fate knows what it’s doing?”</p><p>“Maybe,” her dad said with a shrug, his voice a little rough around the edges now. “But more because she told me none of the most important parts of her would be gone.”</p><p>“What were the most important parts?” Julie asked, not because she didn’t know, but because sometimes you needed to hear someone say it out loud for it to feel real.</p><p>“This.” Her dad tugged at the collar of his shirt, revealing his shimmering gray words. <em>Tell me your top five favorite bands right now so I know what I’m in for.</em> “The love.”</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Her mom had a favorite play and in that play she had a favorite line -</p><p>“<em>My bounty is as boundless as the sea,</em><br/>
<em>My love as deep. The more I give to thee,</em><br/>
<em>The more I have, for both are infinite.</em>”</p><p>“But the sea isn’t infinite,” Julie had said once, near the end.</p><p>“Who says it’s not?” her mom asked. The monitor by her bedside was keeping time with her heart.</p><p>“Science,” Carlos piped in from her other side, his head resting on her chest.</p><p>“What if I got in a boat and sailed all the way around the world and ended up back where I started. I could keep sailing like that forever and the sea would never end.” Her mom’s hands felt soft as they smoothed over Julie’s hair. “Isn’t that a kind of infinity?”</p><p>“But no one can sail forever,” Julie said, so soft she could almost not hear herself.</p><p>“No,” her mother agreed. “But the sea will always be there. So love will always be there, too.”</p><p>Julie was thinking of infinity when she and her phantoms took their bow under the blinding stage lights of the Orpheum. Her love for them would always be there, as constant as the sea. What her mom never promised, then or now, was that the knowledge of infinity made the goodbye any easier.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>He left what were supposed to be his last words to her in her dream box. She didn’t see them until much, much later.</p><p>“<em>Your life was my after life’s best part.</em>”</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>They were alive.</p><p>No - not alive. They were something more now, something more substantial than mere ghosts, but they were not alive.</p><p>That hardly mattered though. What mattered was they were free of Caleb’s stamp. What mattered, Julie thought a little selfishly, was they had not crossed over. They were hers a little while longer. That broken clock of hers, though it still ticked out of rhythm, had not run out yet.</p><p>She hummed the melody of a song that came to her in a waking dream, a love song that made her feel light on her feet, as she walked back to the house. If she stayed up any later, her father would come searching.</p><p>A more than familiar face stopped her at the front door.</p><p>“Julie, I -” Luke was on the porch step, wringing his hands, and it reminded her of a song they had already sung through. Tonight, a reprise. “I know you said that stuff about needing a little time and I totally get that you probably need more, but I guess I just wanted to say - I’m sorry.”</p><p>“Why would you be sorry?” Julie said slowly.</p><p>“I didn’t realize right away that your words - that they’d be gray. Which is stupid, because we knew with Alex...but what I mean is, it must have sucked going through life thinking…” Luke trailed off, glancing down at his feet. “I don’t even know. So I guess I’m sorry for being the world’s most complicated soulmate.”</p><p>It was the first time either of them said it out loud. It took all the air out of Julie’s lungs.</p><p>“You don’t have to apologize. It’s not your fault,” Julie said once she started breathing again. “I mean, I don’t mind when things are complicated. I’m in a ghost band, aren’t I?”</p><p>Luke laughed, but it had a sad note to it, set in a minor key. Julie had wondered, once, if ghosts could really cry or if it was only an illusion of tears brimming in their eyes. When Julie wrapped her arms around Luke for a second time that night and he buried his face in the crook of her neck, she felt real tears, almost molten, on her skin.</p><p>“I really want to be alive for you, Julie,” he whispered into her hair.</p><p>Julie thought of her words, darker than they ever had been but not black yet. “We’re going to work this out. I promise.”</p><p>At that moment though, Julie didn’t care about gray words or the strange and thin line between the living and dead. Not when Luke was solid and real and she heard the faintest murmur of a heart beat not her own starting in his chest.</p><p>It all felt the opposite of messy or complicated. It was simple. It was fate.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>1. Pretty much all of season one happens as is in this fic with probably the exception of Flynn pushing Julie hard towards Nick. Can't see Flynn calling Julie's soulmate not real, even if he is a ghost. That'd be way harsh, Tai.</p><p>2. Hope you enjoyed and are staying safe out there!</p></blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>